The differences between fighting Communism for American Presidents Many years passed between the presidential terms of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan yet the fight against Communism endured. Each president had his unique way of defining the importance of fighting Communism, Nixon attempted to contain the spread of Communism while Reagan tried to transcend it. Nixon succeeded when using intelligent and friendly diplomacy in China and the Soviet Union, yet failed in Southeast Asia with his ‘Vietnamization’ program. Reagan found little success in the application of his foreign policy, which was mainly based on the raising of defense spending. Nixon and Reagan had different foreign policies and very different methods of carrying out what they promised, therefore it cannot be said that they had similar ways of fighting Communism.The attitudes of fighting Communism contributed to the differences in defining the importance and urgency with which each president acted. Nixon had a more passive attitude of containment, as shown through his policy of ‘Vietnamization’ in 1970, under which he stated that “American troop strength would be reduced systematically in Vietnam while the South Vietnamese received more military equipment so that they could fight their own war” (LPW, 465). This attempt at slowly backing out of the war indicated the direction that Nixon was heading in the fight against Communism, he took his attention off of Vietnam and moved it to China and the Soviet Union. Whereas Nixon took the passive route, Reagan used powerful anti-Communist rhetoric to set the tone for his approach towards fighting Communists. Of his projected changes “none was more important to Reagan than building up tremendous military strength and then demonstrating that the “Vietnam syndrome,” American reluctance to use military force because of the Vietnam debacle, no longer existed” (LPW, 52...
